---
title: Growing Up to Free Software
date: 11 May 2017
...

I was a Wikipedia child. I don't fault my parents for it. I was socially inept;
it's not their fault I spent every moment from the age of six onwards glued to
a monitor. After all, in the real world, I was ignored and picked on by my
"friends" around me. At school, the kids were cruel, and I was bored in my
classes. But on my laptop, I was learning to program. I made real friends, for
some definition of "real" -- except for the occasional creep, they were far
more real than anyone I ever knew in person.  I blissfully confided in Skype
and Google running on Mac OS X.  It was nice, if only for a moment.

Life caught up to me sooner than later. When I was ten, puberty hit, and it all
began crashing down, only to soon envelope me in a mushroom cloud of conflict.
With the help of online forums, blogs, and the free encyclopedia, I [came
out](life-on-the-other-side.md) to myself and adopted the name "Alyssa".  Of
course, before being out to myself, I was out to Google. I didn't have time for
that concern, though: the reality of my situation was too harsh. It certainly
didn't help that my real-life harassment intensified -- what did you expect
would happen to an insecure queer girl? I threw myself farther into my exploits
online, in both senses of the word. The more I accomplished, the more numb I'd
become.

I transferred schools, ditched my old "friends", and acquainted myself with the
new, open-minded crowd. Perhaps I give them far too much credit -- they, too,
loved to deadname me, and rarely would I hear "she". Even until the end, the
administration was more concerned with its pristine image of a place where
cisgender children grow. Still, with time they understood, and it was there I
met my best friends. And though I didn't know it then, there I met a teacher
who went on to change my life. At that school, we studied "humanities", a
weasel word encompassing English, history, and civics, since just calling it
that would be too plain. But from my humanities teacher, I did learn my
humanity.  One day, we studied clause punctuation; the next, we learned to
change the world. The flame was burning.

At home, I discovered writings by Richard Stallman, the father of the free
software movement. I was mesmerised. I've since calmed considerably, but for a
semester, I was mini-RMS. I was already familiar with the open source
movement, and I had experience running GNU/Linux on a server. My transition to
the world of free software was graceful. Over a six month period, my ideals
spiraled tremendously, only broken up by an episode of what-appears-to-be
depression.

I now have the benefit of hindsight. I can comprehend the emotional void I felt
when I was young. I can realise how little improved as I aged. I can pinpoint
precisely what was wrong with my period as a hateful free software zealot. I
can appreciate that, however talented I may be, programming doesn't ignite a
spark inside me -- but I'm starting to discover other pursuits, like writing,
do intrigue me. Most of all, I'm not suspended in fear of the unknown. At the
beginning of April, I made my first notable contribution to free software. It
was writing, not code, that earned me a reference. ^[\[citation
needed\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libreboot#History)^

At one time, I joined the world of free software because I hated the
proprietary evils of my childhood. But today I'm staying because I'm drunk on
freedom from a world to come.  I've joined a number of projects, contributing
in a variety of ways and meeting a number of fascinating people. At home, I
recently started hormone therapy. The world's looking up. Part of me wishes I
could have been normal and cis. Part of me regrets growing up as a file in a
Utah data center and a product of Mountain View, CA. Part of me is
uncomfortable that I was exposed to hard pornography online as I was a tiny
child. That I'm persistently harassed by TSA officers each time I try to
travel. That cameras have been pointed at me since my post-9/11 birth. That
what I know about sex and gender is from Wikipedia, the Trevor Project, and of
all places, Reddit.

But somehow, with the help of so many others, I've learned to channel my hate
into love. I can't keep feeling sorry for myself, lamenting a life that could
have been. Maybe the cards dealt to me were rough, but they're all I have.
Today, I have a passion I truly enjoy, friends I trust, online and off, and a
body I'm comfortable in. Maybe I'm not free yet, but for once, I'm happy.
